Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls of many societies worldwide.

In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by
law, local custom, and behaviour, whereas in others they may be ignored
or suppressed. They differ from broader notions of human rights through
claims of an inherent historical and traditional bias against the
exercise of rights by women and girls in favour of men and boys.[1]

Issues commonly associated with notions of women's rights include,
though are not limited to, the right: to bodily integrity and autonomy;
to vote (suffrage); to hold public office; to work; to fair wages or equal pay; to own property; to education; to serve in the military or be conscripted; to enter into legal contracts; and to have marital, parental and religious rights.[2]

History of women's rights

China

The status of women in China was low, largely due to the custom of foot binding.
About 45% of Chinese women had bound feet in the 19th century. For the
upper classes, it was almost 100%. In 1912, the Chinese government
ordered the cessation of foot-binding. Foot-binding involved alteration
of the bone structure so that the feet were only about 4 inches long.
The bound feet caused difficulty of movement, thus greatly limiting the
activities of women.

Due to the social custom that men and women should not be near to one
another, the women of China were reluctant to be treated by male
doctors of Western Medicine. This resulted in a tremendous need for
female doctors of Western Medicine in China. Thus, female medical
missionary Dr. Mary H. Fulton (1854-1927)[3]
was sent by the Foreign Missions Board of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
to found the first medical college for women in China. Known as the
Hackett Medical College for Women (夏葛女子醫學院),[4][5]
this College was located in Guangzhou, China, and was enabled by a
large donation from Mr. Edward A.K. Hackett (1851-1916) of Indiana, USA.
The College was aimed at the spreading of Christianity and modern
medicine and the elevation of Chinese women's social status.[6][7]

In ancient Athens, women had no legal personhood and were assumed to be part of the oikos headed by the male kyrios.
Until marriage, women were under the guardianship of their father or
other male relative, once married the husband became a woman’s kyrios.
As women were barred from conducting legal proceedings, the kyrios would
do so on their behalf.[9] Athenian women had limited right to property and therefore were not considered full citizens, as citizenship and the entitlement to civil and political rights was defined in relation to property and the means to life.[10]
However, women could acquire rights over property through gifts, dowry
and inheritance, though her kyrios had the right to dispose of a woman’s
property.[11] Athenian women could enter into a contract worth less than the value of a “medimnos of barley” (a measure of grain), allowing women to engage in petty trading.[9]
Slaves, like women, were not eligible for full citizenship in ancient
Athens, though in rare circumstances they could become citizens if
freed. The only permanent barrier to citizenship, and hence full
political and civil rights, in ancient Athens was gender. No women ever
acquired citizenship in ancient Athens, and therefore women were
excluded in principle and practice from ancient Athenian democracy.[12]

By contrast, Spartan
women enjoyed a status, power, and respect that was unknown in the rest
of the classical world. Although Spartan women were formally excluded
from military and political life they enjoyed considerable status as
mothers of Spartan warriors. As men engaged in military activity, women
took responsibility for running estates. Following protracted warfare in
the 4th century BC Spartan women owned approximately between 35% and
40% of all Spartan land and property.[13][14] By the Hellenistic Period, some of the wealthiest Spartans were women.[15] They controlled their own properties, as well as the properties of male relatives who were away with the army.[13]
Spartan women rarely married before the age of 20, and unlike Athenian
women who wore heavy, concealing clothes and were rarely seen outside
the house, Spartan women wore short dresses and went where they pleased.[16] Girls as well as boys received an education, and young women as well as young men may have participated in the Gymnopaedia ("Festival of Nude Youths").[13][17]

Plato
acknowledged that extending civil and political rights to women would
substantively alter the nature of the household and the state.[18]Aristotle,
who had been taught by Plato, denied that women were slaves or subject
to property, arguing that "nature has distinguished between the female
and the slave", but he considered wives to be "bought". He argued that
women's main economic activity is that of safeguarding the household
property created by men. According to Aristotle the labour of women
added no value because "the art of household management is not identical
with the art of getting wealth, for the one uses the material which the
other provides".[19]

Contrary to these views, the Stoic philosophers argued for equality of the sexes, sexual inequality being in their view contrary to the laws of nature.[20] In doing so, they followed the Cynics, who argued that men and women should wear the same clothing and receive the same kind of education.[20]
They also saw marriage as a moral companionship between equals rather
than a biological or social necessity, and practiced these views in
their lives as well as their teachings.[20]
The Stoics adopted the views of the Cynics and added them to their own
theories of human nature, thus putting their sexual egalitarianism on a
strong philosophical basis.[20]

Rome

Father Knows Best

Under Roman Law all legitimate children male or female fell under Patria Potestas.
Patria Potestas was technically absolute and early on included the
right to kill children, but during the Late Republic customs changed,
and during the Empire, legal rules changed in reflection. The unique
thing about Patria Potestas was that it had no age limits, according to Gaius
a man could be consul, have a wife and children of his own and future
prominence but as long as his father was alive was still under his
potestas (power) and so could own nothing. Patria Potestas only ended
with either the death of the father, or emancipation by him. Early in
the Republic Manus Marriage
ended the potestas for women, but during the middle and later Republic
that form of marriage became rare, eventually disappearing completely.

Marriage Under Law

Rome had only two forms of marriage, and both had exactly the opposite view of legal effects. Manus Marriage
was the earlier form of marriage and placed the woman under her
husband's manus legally standing in the position of a daughter. Under
this type of marriage women could own nothing, and had little if any
legal protections. On the other hand a woman assumed the position of her
husband's daughter in Manus Marriage making her agnatically instead of
cognatically related to her children.

Marriage Sine Manu was the second form of marriage that replaced
Manus, and was the opposite of Manus. Women married Sine Manu
experienced no legal changes, so if her father was alive at time of
marriage she continued to be his dependent and before the reign of
Marcus Aurelius he could even force an end to the marriage. The lack of
any legal change of status for the women meant that (provided their
father had either died or emancipated them) they could own property,
conduct most forms of business, and divorce her husband (without any
reason needed). Legally speaking the only lack of independence a woman
in Rome experienced in a marriage without Manus was from her father. The
only legal issue related to marriage was dowry. A dowry was not
required by law, but was usually provided by a father or if a father was
nonexistent it would be whatever the bride wished to come out of her
own estate. It was administered by the husband, but in the event of a
divorce he was required to provide either the dowry or the equivalent of
it back to his wife. In the case of adultery, husbands got to keep
portions of the dowry.

Politics

Legally speaking women were banned from politics. As with freedmen
and slaves of the Imperial Family women of the imperial family gained
some benefits from the fall of the Republic, but because the nature of
the Principate was to hide dictatorship such power had to be subtle and
kept out of the public eye when possible. The ban on women and politics
was they could not vote or run for office (sine suffragio) enlist in the
army, or represent somebody else in court, women speaking their minds
was not considered politics and so some women like Hortensia managed to make appearances in politics without violating the law.

Inheritance Rights

Everyone under the potestas of another had equal rights of
inheritance under Roman Law, and wills that did otherwise ran risks of
being challenged and invalidated as negligent.

Stoic Influence

Stoic philosophies had a strong effect on the development of law in ancient Rome. The Roman stoic thinkers Seneca and Musonius Rufus
developed theories of just relationships (not to be confused with
equality in society, or even equality) arguing that nature gives men and
women equal capacity for virtue and equal obligations to act virtuously
(a vague concept). Therefore they argued that men and women have an
equal need for philosophical education.[20] Stoic theories entered Roman law first through the Roman lawyer and senator Marcus Tullius Cicero and the influence of stoicism and philosophy increased while the status of women improved under the Empire.[21]

The Qur'an, revealed to Muhammad over the course of 23 years, provide guidance to the Islamic community and modified existing customs in Arab society. From 610 and 661, known as the early reforms under Islam, the Qur'an introduced fundamental reforms to customary law and introduced rights for women in marriage, divorce and inheritance.
By providing that the wife, not her family, would receive a dowry from
the husband, which she could administer as her personal property, the
Qur'an made women a legal party to the marriage contract.[citation needed]

While in customary law inheritance was limited to male descendents,
the Qur'an introduced rules on inheritance with certain fixed shares
being distributed to designated heirs, first to the nearest female
relatives and then the nearest male relatives.[22] According to Annemarie Schimmel "compared to the pre-Islamic position of women, Islamic legislation meant an enormous progress; the woman has the right, at least according to the letter of the law, to administer the wealth she has brought into the family or has earned by her own work."[23]

The Middle Ages

According to English Common Law,
which developed from the 12th century onward, all property which a wife
held at the time of a marriage became a possession of her husband.
Eventually English courts forbade a husband's transferring property
without the consent of his wife, but he still retained the right to
manage it and to receive the money which it produced. French married
women suffered from restrictions on their legal capacity which were
removed only in 1965.[30] In the 16th century, the Reformation in Europe allowed more women to add their voices, including the English writers Jane Anger, Aemilia Lanyer, and the prophetess Anna Trapnell. English and American Quakers believed that men and women were equal. Many Quaker women were preachers.[31] Despite relatively greater freedom for Anglo-Saxon women, until the mid-19th century, writers largely assumed that a patriarchal order was a natural order that had always existed.[32] This perception was not seriously challenged until the 18th century when Jesuit missionaries found matrilineality in native North American peoples.[33]

Starting in the late 18th century, and throughout the 19th century,
rights, as a concept and claim, gained increasing political, social and
philosophical importance in Europe. Movements emerged which demanded freedom of religion, the abolition of slavery, rights for women, rights for those who did not own property and universal suffrage.[35]
In the late 18th century the question of women's rights became central
to political debates in both France and Britain. At the time some of the
greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, who defended democratic principles of equality
and challenged notions that a privileged few should rule over the vast
majority of the population, believed that these principles should be
applied only to their own gender and their own race. The philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau
for example thought that it was the order of nature for woman to obey
men. He wrote "Women do wrong to complain of the inequality of man-made
laws" and claimed that "when she tries to usurp our rights, she is our
inferior".[36]

In 1791 the French playwright and political activistOlympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen,[37] modelled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. The Declaration is ironic in formulation and exposes the failure of the French Revolution, which had been devoted to equality.
It states that: “This revolution will only take effect when all women
become fully aware of their deplorable condition, and of the rights they
have lost in society”. The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the
Female Citizen follows the seventeen articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
point for point and has been described by Camille Naish as “almost a
parody...of the original document”. The first article of the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaims that “Men are born
and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based
only on common utility.” The first article of Declaration of the Rights
of Woman and the Female Citizen replied: “Woman is born free and remains
equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may only be based on common
utility”. De Gouges expands the sixth article of the Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which declared the rights of citizens
to take part in the formation of law, to:

Australian women's rights were lampooned in this 1887 Melbourne Punch cartoon: A hypothetical female member foists her baby's care on the House Speaker

“All citizens including women are equally admissible to all public
dignities, offices and employments, according to their capacity, and
with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents”.

De Gouges also draws attention to the fact that under French law women were fully punishable, yet denied equal rights.[38]

Mary Wollstonecraft, a British writer and philosopher, published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, arguing that it was the education and upbringing of women that created limited expectations.[39][40]
Wollstonecraft attacked gender oppression, pressing for equal
educational opportunities, and demanded "justice!" and "rights to
humanity" for all.[41] Wollstonecraft, along with her British contemporaries Damaris Cudworth and Catherine Macaulay
started to use the language of rights in relation to women, arguing
that women should have greater opportunity because like men, they were
moral and rational beings.[42]

A Punch cartoon from 1867 mocking John Stuart Mill's
attempt to replace the term 'man' with 'person', i.e. give women the
right to vote. Caption: Mill's Logic: Or, Franchise for Females. "Pray
clear the way, there, for these – a – persons."[43]

"We are continually told that civilization and Christianity have
restored to the woman her just rights. Meanwhile the wife is the actual
bondservant of her husband; no less so, as far as the legal obligation
goes, than slaves commonly so called."

Then a member of parliament, Mill argued that women should be given the right to vote, though his proposal to replace the term "man" with "person" in the second Reform Bill of 1867 was greeted with laughter in the House of Commons and defeated by 76 to 196 votes. His arguments won little support amongst contemporaries[43] but his attempt to amend the reform bill generated greater attention for the issue of women's suffrage in Britain.[44]
Initially only one of several women’s rights campaign, suffrage became
the primary cause of the British women’s movement at the beginning of
the 20th century.[45] At the time the ability to vote was restricted to wealthy property owners within British jurisdictions. This arrangement implicitly excluded women as property law and marriage law
gave men ownership rights at marriage or inheritance until the
19th century. Although male suffrage broadened during the century, women
were explicitly prohibited from voting nationally and locally in the
1830s by a Reform Act and the Municipal Corporations Act.[46]Millicent Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst led the public campaign on women's suffrage and in 1918 a bill was passed allowing women over the age of 30 to vote.[46]

Equal employment rights for women and men

The rights of women and men to have equal pay and equal benefits for equal work were openly denied by the British Hong Kong
Government up to the early 1970s. Leslie Wah-Leung Chung (鍾華亮,
1917-2009), President of the Hong Kong Chinese Civil Servants’
Association 香港政府華員會[47]
(1965-68), contributed to the establishment of equal pay for men and
women, including the right for married women to be permanent employees.
Before this, the job status of a woman changed from permanent employee
to temporary employee once she was married, thus losing the pension
benefit. Some of them even lost their jobs. Since nurses were mostly
women, this improvement of the rights of married women meant much to the
Nursing profession.[48][49][50][51][52][53][6][7]

Suffrage, the right to vote

Women standing in line to vote in Bangladesh.

1919 election poster, German social democrats. "Frauen! Gleiche Rechte,
Gleiche Pflichten" ("Women! The same rights, the same duties")

During the 19th century some women began to agitate for the right to vote and participate in government and law making.[54]
Other women opposed suffrage like Helen Kendrick Johnson, whose
prescient 1897 work Woman and the Republic contains perhaps the best
arguments against women's suffrage of the time.[55] The ideals of women's suffrage developed alongside that of universal suffrage and today women's suffrage is considered a right (under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).[citation needed]
During the 19th century the right to vote was gradually extended in
many countries and women started to campaign for their right to vote. In
1893 New Zealand became the first country to give women the right to
vote on a national level. Australia gave women the right to vote in
1902.[44] A number of Nordic countries
gave women the right to vote in the early 20th century – Finland
(1906), Norway (1913), Denmark and Iceland (1915). With the end of the
First World War many other countries followed – the Netherlands (1917),
Austria, Azerbaijan,[56] Canada, Czechoslovakia,
Georgia, Poland,and Sweden (1918), Germany and Luxembourg (1919), and
the United States (1920) . Spain gave women the right to vote in 1931,
France in 1944, Belgium, Italy, Romania and Yugoslavia in 1946. Switzerland gave women the right to vote in 1971, and Liechtenstein in 1984.[44]

In Latin America some countries gave women the right to vote in the
first half of the 20th century – Ecuador (1929), Brazil (1932), El
Salvador (1939), Dominican Republic (1942), Guatemala (1956) and
Argentina (1946). In India, under colonial rule, universal suffrage was
granted in 1935. Other Asian countries gave women the right to vote in
the mid 20th century – Japan (1945), China (1947) and Indonesia (1955).
In Africa women generally got the right to vote along with men through universal suffrage – Liberia (1947), Uganda (1958) and Nigeria (1960). In many countries in the Middle East universal suffrage was acquired after the Second World War, although in others, such as Kuwait, suffrage is very limited.[44] On 16 May 2005, the Parliament of Kuwait extended suffrage to women by a 35–23 vote.[57]

Property rights

During the 19th century some women in the United States and Britain began to challenge laws that denied them the right to their property once they married. Under the common law doctrine of coverture husbands gained control of their wives' real estate and wages. Beginning in the 1840s, state legislatures in the United States[58] and the British Parliament[59]
began passing statutes that protected women's property from their
husbands and their husbands' creditors. These laws were known as the
Married Women's Property Acts.[60]
Courts in the 19th-century United States also continued to require
privy examinations of married women who sold their property. A privy examination
was a practice in which a married woman who wished to sell her property
had to be separately examined by a judge or justice of the peace
outside of the presence of her husband and asked if her husband was
pressuring her into signing the document.[61]

In the subsequent decades women's rights again became an important
issue in the English speaking world. By the 1960s the movement was
called "feminism" or "women's liberation." Reformers wanted the same pay
as men, equal rights in law, and the freedom to plan their families or
not have children at all. Their efforts were met with mixed results.[62]

In the UK, a public groundswell of opinion in favour of legal
equality had gained pace, partly through the extensive employment of
women in what were traditional male roles during both world wars. By the
1960s the legislative process was being readied, tracing through MP Willie Hamilton's select committee report, his equal pay for equal work bill,[63] the creation of a Sex Discrimination Board, Lady Sear's draft sex anti-discrimination bill, a government Green Paper of 1973, until 1975 when the first British Sex Discrimination Act, an Equal Pay Act, and an Equal Opportunities Commission came into force.[64][65] With encouragement from the UK government, the other countries of the EEC soon followed suit with an agreement to ensure that discrimination laws would be phased out across the European Community.

In the USA, the National Organization for Women
(NOW) was created in 1966 with the purpose of bringing about equality
for all women. NOW was one important group that fought for the Equal Rights Amendment
(ERA). This amendment stated that "equality of rights under the law
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on
account of sex."[66]
But there was disagreement on how the proposed amendment would be
understood. Supporters believed it would guarantee women equal
treatment. But critics feared it might deny women the right be
financially supported by their husbands. The amendment died in 1982
because not enough states had ratified it. ERAs have been included in
subsequent Congresses, but have still failed to be ratified.[67]

In Ukraine, FEMEN
was founded in 2008. The organisation is internationally known for its
topless protests against sex tourists, international marriage agencies,
sexism and other social, national and international social illnesses.
FEMEN has sympathisers groups in many European countries through social
media.

Birth control and reproductive rights

"And the villain still pursues her." Satirical Victorian era postcard

In the 1870s feminists advanced the concept of voluntary motherhood as a political critique of involuntary motherhood[68] and expressing a desire for women's emancipation.[69] Advocates for voluntary motherhood disapproved of contraception, arguing that women should only engage in sex for the purpose of procreation[70] and advocated for periodic or permanent abstinence.[71]

Cover of the 1919 Birth Control Review, published by Margaret Sanger.
In relation to "How shall we change the law?" Sanger wrote "...women
appeal in vain for instruction concerning contraceptives. Physicians are
willing to perform abortions where they are pronounced necessary, but
they refuse to direct the use of preventives which would make the
abortions unnecessary... "I can't do it – the law does not permit it.""[72]

In the early 20th century birth control was advanced as alternative to the then fashionable terms family limitation and voluntary motherhood.[73][74] The phrase "birth control" entered the English language in 1914 and was popularised by Margaret Sanger,[73][74] who was mainly active in the US but had gained an international reputation by the 1930s. The British birth control campaigner Marie Stopes made contraception
acceptable in Britain during the 1920 by framing it in scientific
terms. Stopes assisted emerging birth control movements in a number of British colonies.[75]
The birth control movement advocated for contraception so as to permit
sexual intercourse as desired without the risk of pregnancy.[71] By emphasising control
the birth control movement argued that women should have control over
their reproduction and the movement had close ties to the feminist
movement. Slogans such as "control over our own bodies" criticised male
domination and demanded women's liberation, a connotation that is absent
from the family planning, population control and eugenics movements.[76]
In the 1960s and 1970s the birth control movement advocated for the
legalisation of abortion and large scale education campaigns about
contraception by governments.[77]
In the 1980s birth control and population control organisations
co-operated in demanding rights to contraception and abortion, with an
increasing emphasis on "choice".[76]

Women's access to legal abortions is restricted by law in most countries in the world.[83]
Where abortion is permitted by law, women may only have limited access
to safe abortion services. Only a small number of countries prohibit
abortion in all cases. In most countries and jurisdictions, abortion is
allowed to save the pregnant woman's life, or where the pregnancy is the
result of rape or incest.[84] According to Human Rights Watch
"Abortion is a highly emotional subject and one that excites deeply
held opinions. However, equitable access to safe abortion services is
first and foremost a human right. Where abortion is safe and legal, no
one is forced to have one. Where abortion is illegal and unsafe, women
are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or suffer serious
health consequences and even death. Approximately 13% of maternal deaths
worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortion—between 68,000 and 78,000
deaths annually."[84]
According to Human Rights Watch "the denial of a pregnant woman's right
to make an independent decision regarding abortion violates or poses a
threat to a wide range of human rights."[85][86] Other groups however, such as the Catholic Church, the Christian right and most Orthodox Jews, regard abortion not as a right but as a 'moral evil'.[87]

Natural law and women's rights

17th century natural law philosophers in Britain and America, such as Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, developed the theory of natural rights in reference to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and the Christian theologise Aquinas. Like the ancient philosophers, 17th century natural law philosophers defended slavery and an inferior status of women in law.[93] Relying on ancient Greek philosophers, natural law philosophers argued that natural rights
where not derived from god, but were "universal, self-evident, and
intuitive", a law that could be found in nature. They believed that
natural rights were self-evident to "civilised man" who lives "in the
highest form of society".[94] Natural rights derived from human nature, a concept first established by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium in Concerning Human Nature.
Zenon argued that each rational and civilized male Greek citizen had a
"divine spark" or "soul" within him that existed independent of the
body. Zeno founded the Stoic philosophy and the idea of a human nature was adopted by other Greek philosophers, and later natural law philosophers and western humanists.[95] Aristotle developed the widely adopted idea of rationality,
arguing that man was a "rational animal" and as such a natural power of
reason. Concepts of human nature in ancient Greece depended on gender,
ethnic, and other qualifications[96]
and 17th century natural law philosophers came to regard women along
with children, slaves and non-whites, as neither "rational" nor
"civilised".[94]
Natural law philosophers claimed the inferior status of women was
"common sense" and a matter of "nature". They believed that women could
not be treated as equal due to their "inner nature".[93] The views of 17th century natural law philosophers were opposed in the 18th and 19th century by Evangelicalnatural theology philosophers such as William Wilberforce and Charles Spurgeon, who argued for the abolition of slavery and advocated for women to have rights equal to that of men.[93]
Modern natural law theorist, and advocates of natural rights, claim
that all people have a human nature, regardless of gender, ethnicity or
other qualifications, therefore all people have natural rights.[96]

Human rights and women's rights

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

The Convention defines discrimination against women in the following terms:

Any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex
which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their
marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights
and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural,
civil or any other field.

It also establishes an agenda of action for putting an end to
sex-based discrimination for which states ratifying the Convention are
required to enshrine gender equality
into their domestic legislation, repeal all discriminatory provisions
in their laws, and enact new provisions to guard against discrimination
against women. They must also establish tribunals and public
institutions to guarantee women effective protection against
discrimination, and take steps to eliminate all forms of discrimination
practiced against women by individuals, organizations, and enterprises.[99]

Maputo Protocol

The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, better known as the Maputo Protocol, was adopted by the African Union on 11 July 2003 at its second summit in Maputo,[100]
Mozambique. On 25 November 2005, having been ratified by the required
15 member nations of the African Union, the protocol entered into force.[101]
The protocol guarantees comprehensive rights to women including the
right to take part in the political process, to social and political equality with men, and to control of their reproductive health, and an end to female genital mutilation.[102]

Rape as an element of the crime of genocide

In 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda established by the United Nations made landmark decisions that rape is a crime of genocide under international law. The trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu,
the mayor of Taba Commune in Rwanda, established precedents that rape
is an element of the crime of genocide. The Akayesu judgement includes
the first interpretation and application by an international court of
the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The Trial Chamber held that rape, which it defined as "a physical
invasion of a sexual nature committed on a person under circumstances
which are coercive", and sexual assault constitute acts of genocide
insofar as they were committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a targeted group, as such. It found that sexual assault formed
an integral part of the process of destroying the Tutsi
ethnic group and that the rape was systematic and had been perpetrated
against Tutsi women only, manifesting the specific intent required for
those acts to constitute genocide.[103]

Judge Navanethem Pillay said in a statement after the verdict: “From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime. We want to send out a strong message that rape is no longer a trophy of war.”[104] An estimated 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.[105]

2011 study of status by country

Status of women by country according to data collected by Lauren Streib

In the 26 September 2011 issue of Newsweek magazine[111]
a study was published on the rights and quality of life of women in
countries around the world. The factors taken into account were legal
justice, health and healthcare, education, economic opportunity, and
political power. The rankings were determined by Lauren Streib by
uniform criteria and available statistics.[112] According to the study, the best and worst were:[113]